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Blue Jays find needed reprieve in rare stress-free win

TORONTO — Perhaps more than any other sport, baseball has an extraordinary range of possible tension levels.

There are hundreds of pitches in every game, and in the tightest contests every single one is a white-knuckle moment with a series of draining pauses between them — each of which can feel like an eternity. Alternatively, there are just as many games where the vast minority of the at-bats feel consequential as the game is over soon after it begins.

The type of ballgame the Toronto Blue Jays played on Monday night fit the latter description, and it was just what the doctor ordered for the team. More than half the Blue Jays’ games in May had been decided by two or few runs, so it felt awfully good for the club to put their feet up a little bit in a 17-2 win over the Cincinnati Reds.

“I don’t know if we were due, but we were waiting on one of those,” manager John Gibbons said after the low-stress blowout.

It started with Russell Martin who gave the Blue Jays their first runs of the game on an opposite-field wall-scraper with one aboard that granted the team a 2-1 lead. Troy Tulowitzki provided the club command of the game an inning later by turning a Robert Stephenson second pitch of the game — a fastball up-and-in — into four runs.

Run-away wins have been few and far between for the Blue Jays, but Monday night wasn’t very stressful for the club.<br>(Frank Gunn/CP)
Run-away wins have been few and far between for the Blue Jays, but Monday night wasn’t very stressful for the club.
(Frank Gunn/CP)

“I try to get a good pitch and put a good swing on it and try to keep it as simple as I possibly can,” Tulowitzki said. “On the grand slam I got a good pitch to hit, put a good swing on it and it kind of broke the game open.”

If the game wasn’t done yet — and it almost certainly was at 7-1 — Justin Smoak came back the next inning to put the final nail in the coffin by lashing a 107.5 mph line drive out to right for a three-run shot.

The offensive explosion was unprecedented for the 2017 Blue Jays, who hadn’t cracked double-digit runs in a game prior to Monday. It didn’t hurt them that Reds starter Lasalverto Bonilla and the first reliever they used, Stephenson, brought a combined 6.26 ERA, 5.80 FIP, and -0.3 WAR into the game. Toronto should have been expected to put the bats to work, but 17 runs on 23 hits and seven walks is impressive regardless of the competition.

As a result of the lineup’s outburst, the performance of starter Marcus Stroman went largely unnoticed, but it was an essential component to keeping the night stress-free. After allowing a first-inning run manufactured by the incomparable wheels of Billy Hamilton, the right-hander didn’t let the Reds get an improbable comeback attempt off the ground. With an Adam Duvall home run as his only other blemish, Stroman went six strong striking out five and refusing to concede a single free pass.

“I definitely just tried to be down in the zone and mix [my pitches],” Stroman said of his performance. “I felt good out there today and had a good mix with Russell.”

Tasked with the enviable task of preserving an 11-run lead over three innings, the bullpen responded capably with Dominic Leone and J.P. Howell keeping the Reds off the board down the stretch.

The nature of the win helped the Blue Jays’ outlook for the rest of the series. They forced the Reds bullpen to toss 116 pitches over 5.2 innings compared to their 41 over three. Top arms like Roberto Osuna, Joe Smith and Ryan Tepera were reduced to spectators, keeping them fresh for Tuesday when J.A. Happ’s limited return will make for a big bullpen day.

“Our bullpen definitely needed a rest, that’s for sure,” Gibbons said. “I was debating whether I should throw Stro out in the sixth but with the fact that Happ was pitching tomorrow with some limitation we gave him the extra inning just for those guys down in the ‘pen.”

On the position player side, John Gibbons gave Jose Bautista, Josh Donaldson and Tulowitzki blows by lifting them in the seventh and replacing them with Darwin Barney, Ryan Goins and Luke Maile (with Martin getting some more time at third base). With a nasty night-game-day-game turnaround from Tuesday to Wednesday, that could certainly benefit the veteran trio.

From comical offensive production to efficient pitching, the Blue Jays earned their non-competitive win on merit — along with all its accompanying perks. Nearing the end of a long month, with Happ’s potentially-taxing return ahead, those perks were sorely needed.